


It's A Shame But It's Your Honor

by KyeAbove



Series: Monstra [6]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 11:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13716585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyeAbove/pseuds/KyeAbove
Summary: Emery Bendtsen clears up his late grandfather’s home and comes across the musings and drawings of a man who died decades ago.





	It's A Shame But It's Your Honor

Emery hadn’t been particularly close with his grandfather. Not for a lack of seeing him, but he’d sooner say he knew his father then say he was truly close with his grandfather. If he had say he was close to any of his family, it would be his aunt Jen. After his father Leon had skipped out on him, Felix had raised Emery alongside his aunt, who was only a few years older than Emery, so he thought of her more as a sister.

But he hadn’t really known Felix. Now that he was gone, Emery finally accepted that.

Emery knew Felix had married a woman and stayed married to her for almost twenty years, even though he was very gay. His first real boyfriend died in a car accident, and his next string of lovers never worked out for long. 

Emery knew Felix had cared for him and Jen, and even Leon, deeply. But Emery also knew that he was closed up. Couldn’t fully express what he felt. Stumbled. Fell.

Emery knew Felix had doubted himself. Just because he didn’t always think things through and stumbled with concepts most took to easily. People reminded him of that, causing more doubt. 

But Emery hadn’t known why Felix looked so haunted every day, until he died. Why sometimes when as a child, Emery would go to Felix’s room after a nightmare and find his grandfather already awake, and crying. 

Emery remember once, he’d come across a black coat in a shopping mall, and wanted it greatly. Felix had dragged him away from the display and they promptly left the mall. His girlfriend of the time, Sophie, had later bought it for him, presenting it to him with an awkward smile. He wasn’t allowed to wear it around Felix. It was seemingly a part of the trauma. 

It seemed like an insult to be wearing the coat now. But it had been cold outside. 

His childhood home stood before him. It was over a century old. Generations of his family had lived here, and it didn’t seem fair to change that. The house was now in his name. His and Sophie’s small apartment was comfy, but if they were going to make this work, Emery wanted to be back where he belonged. 

They needed a bigger place, anyways, if Sophie’s wish for many children could come true. They already had one daughter, Nora, recently adopted, and Sophie was already tossing around more names, like Graham, and Walter, and Emery didn’t doubt more were to come. 

Like many children would make up for what she’d done in the past, but Emery appreciated the gesture.

Emery tried to imagine these kids living in this place, as he stepped through the door, and despite his misgivings, those thoughts felt like home. 

There wasn’t much to do here. Clear away any real clutter and rearrange what should be. This was all Emery’s day might have been, had he not found some boxes in a closet. The room that used to belong to his father. Opening the boxes yielded unexpected results.

Old drawings on paper just as old. But the pictures were still clear. Random cartoons, characters and scenes. Characters that never made it to screen, while others his family owned the rights to, but hadn’t done anything with. Henry Bendtsen’s drawings. 

Henry was a quiet subject in the family. A man gone before even Leon had been born. Murdered. 

So it was pleasant to see Henry’s life as this. Emery sat down with the box, and looked at every drawing. 

Many sketches were barely more than Felix the Cat fanart. The less confident lines and the uneven shading was evident that these were some of Henry’s earliest drawings. But he was passionate. Sketching what he knew, even if it was just drawing his own interpretations of the shorts he watched. From how many drawings of Felix the Cat there were, was there in any wonder he’d named his son after the character?

Quickly, Boris the Wolf appeared. First as a rough sketch, and then with a name. Every sketch brought him closer to the Boris the public once knew. Then, there were stacks of paper held together, which when flipped made a simple animation of Boris. Henry’s first relizations that he really wanted to be an animator. 

The animations grew more common, as did the random characters that never made it to screen. Henry looking for a perfect foil for Boris. It didn’t reflect in the drawings, but Emery knew that the first shorts would lack anyone but Boris, because Henry couldn’t think of that perfect character. 

Then the breakthrough. More defined drawings of Felix the Cat with a note of  **_like this but not._ **

So that’s how Bendy the Dancing Demon came to be. The drawings of Bendy were passionate, the most out of all the cartoon, and Emery could feel the love even now. It was sad that people today weren’t enjoying that passion. 

Aside from the cartoons, there were also realistic drawings of people, accompanied by small notes. By the drawing of a boy in overalls brandishing a broom, Henry had written  **_I hope he got out of there_ ** . Beside the drawing of a smiling man with hair so long it was at his waist even with most tied up into a high ponytail, Henry had written  **_Sammy never smiled. This is my best guess what it’d look like if he ever did. Not included: World Ending._ **

Not just singular people, scenes too. A tall man clearly getting chewed out by a much shorter man, with a note of  **_See if Joey bothered to educate himself like I did, he would probably be having less of these fights with Grant._ **

There was a lot of Joey, some carefully and lovingly drawn, others more offensive and more in line with Henry’s later style of drawing. Even after leaving the studio, he couldn’t get that man out of his head.

Emery had felt that. Still did. Sophie had looked at him with such loving eyes when he’d met her in the park, while he’d first felt fear, and even after she’d slipped him her number and ran off, he could stop thinking about her. Maybe not in the best way, but love was love, and they’d eventually worked it out. 

Colors covered a drawing of Joey smiling as he danced, but not by Henry’s hand. 

Emery realized he’d been looking at drawings for three hours, and now the sun was setting. Three hours and he hadn’t gotten much of any work done. He grumbled, reboxing the drawings, but loading them up in the backseat of his car. Emery spent another half hour dusting and wiping down surfaces, before he headed back to his car.

After a quick stop at a fast food place, which he would eat in his driveway, Emery returned home. 

When he entered the kitchen, Sophie was there, humming a little tune as she stirred a pot of something that must have once been edible. 

“Oh, you’re back!” Sophie exclaimed, with a grin and twinkle in her eye. She dropped her spoon, which sunk into the former food, and pulled Emery into a hug. Pulling away, she kept both hands on his shoulders. “How was it?” 

_ “I found something you need to see.”  _ Emery signed. Sophie might find the drawings just as interesting as Emery did. Maybe even more. He’d taken the boxes inside, so they were sitting in the entrance way. 

When Sophie did take a look, she frowned, and frowned again. 

“This is all pretty sad. This is the last thing that ever knew Henry. Felix is gone, and neither Jen or your father knew him. He’s at most a footnote in animation history even though he shouldn't be, and it’s just…” Sophie waved her hands around, trying to come up with a word for what she was feeling.

_ “Wrong.”  _ Emery signed. 

“Well, I was looking for something more dramatic and heartfelt, but that works too.” 

_ “Well, Joey no longer exists either, so I guess it is even. He gets brought up because his studio burned down. That is it.”  _

“Yeah. Ain’t that a shame.” Sophie put all the drawings back in the box. “Can we not dwell on the past tonight? Nora should be waking up soon, and she’d hate to see us upset.” 

Emery nodded, grabbing a box, while Sophie grabbed the others. 

_ “Put them in our room?”  _ Emery asked. 

“That’s best.” Sophie replied. 

So, the boxes went to their bedroom, and from there, they entered the nursery. Nora was still fast asleep, so they stood over her crib, watching her sleep. 

“Do...do you ever think it was wrong? For us to get married like this and pretend that everything is bliss?” Sophie whispered, her tone soft and sad. 

_ “We can only hope it works out, and if it does not, at least we can say we tried, and that it was not as bad as it could have been.” _


End file.
